Metropolitan King County Council 516 Third Ave., Rm. 1200 Seattle, WA 98104 Phone: 206-296-1000 Toll Free: 800-325-6165 TTY/TDD: 206-296-1024 Fax: 206-296-0198 council@kingcounty.gov
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Oct. 23, 2008 Dunn calls for cap on spending and creation of rainy-day reserve fundCharter amendment urged for budget restrictionsMetropolitan King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn today criticized County Executive Ron Sims’ “lifeboat” strategy for addressing the projected $93 million shortfall in the 2009 County general fund, and took the county to task for overspending in the last three years by raiding reserves even during the county’s financial good times.
Dunn called on his Council colleagues to put an amendment to the King County Charter before voters that would permanently cap spending at three percent and send all revenues over and above that amount into a rainy day reserve account.
“The Executive’s proposed budget is based on the premise that we are willing to raise taxes in the middle of next year,” said Dunn. “With the economy in crisis and with the already high tax burden on our citizens, I am unwilling to tax people any more. In the last three years, King County has enacted nine different tax increases. Enough is enough.”
In a letter to the chair of the Council’s Budget Review and Adoption Committee, Larry Phillips, Dunn pointed to the discrepancy between average annual revenue increases of 4.2 percent since 2003 and average annual expenditure increases of 7.7 percent over the same period as evidence that King County has not lived within its means. In addition, King County had $115 million in reserves in 2005 and spent more than $60 million of those reserves over the last three years when times were good for the County.
“King County doesn’t have a revenue crisis, it has a spending crisis,” Dunn said. “If we had saved our reserves and big revenue increases during the good times then we would have the money to cover a downturn in the economy today. Now we are forced to make draconian cuts to essential services, like the Sheriff’s office. As elected leaders of this county, we need to make sure this never happens again.”
In his letter to Phillips, Dunn called for a charter amendment that would create a spending cap of three percent per year with all other revenues automatically deposited into a rainy-day reserve account. Under this scenario, the King County budget would automatically build up reserves that could be used during bad economic times.
“We need to build safeguards into our budgeting system,” Dunn said. “This is similar to something that people do every day. It’s a savings account to cover your costs in case of emergency. Every few years we get caught by the predictable downturns in the business cycle. By saving during the good times instead of spending everything we have, we’ll have money to ride out the bad times, like the one we are experiencing now.
Dunn also called for a 12 percent reduction in Councilmember’s district budgets. Each Councilmember currently receives about $350,000 for staff and communication expenses. That amount would go down roughly $40,000 to just over $300,000 per year.
“As employees county-wide get laid off, Councilmembers need to feel the pain in their budgets too,” Dunn said.
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